"Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by
these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were."
David Rockefeller
Absence of Trust
by Clay Campbell
When you trust someone you believe they’re telling you the truth, you go the extra mile for them, you have a good feeling when their name is mentioned.
In a good marriage there is complete trust. In a well-run business there is trust too. The customer feels that the business owner (or company) will be fair with them. They feel like if there’s a problem the business owner will fix it. If there is anything wrong your trustworthy friend (the business owner) will make it right.
What would cause an absence of trust?
Acting like or indicating in some way that you (the customer) are not important. I told the owner of one of my favorite restaurants, “You know, the thing I like about coming here is that your staff makes my wife and I feel like we’re really special customers and that we are important.”
You would not be able to take care of all the business that would come your way if each and every person who ever walks in the door of your business felt they were treated really important when they left. Probably hundreds of thousands of customers have left one place of business and went to another that sold the same products or service because they felt like were treated as if they were unimportant. It causes an absence of trust.
Saying unflattering, negative things about your competitors. People don’t like it. My Dad used to say, “Boy, if ain’t got nothin’ good to say about somebody, it’s best to keep your mouth shut.” Does it make a politician look good, or entice you to vote for them, when they say their opponent is a liar, an idiot, a cheat, they are not patriotic and none of their ideas are any good? Does it make the pastor of a Baptist church look good to run down a list of things the Charismatic folks or the Methodists aren’t doing right? Saying negative things of ones competitors really ticks me off. It creates an absence of trust.
What else creates an absence of trust?
Here’s my list that may cause consumers not to trust a business:
- Lying. Even a very tiny small lie. Or, not telling all the truth.
- Not following through & following up
- Not being polite
- Using assumptive closes: (you did want to take that home with you today, didn’t you?)
- Using alternate closes:(Did you like the navy suit or would you prefer to get the gray one instead)
- Doing any kind of bait and switch.
- Saying there will never be a better deal than this or saying this sale price will never be repeated
- A business that has a going out of business sale 4 months in a row.
- If a business has over promised and under delivered.
- We’re selling these cars below what we paid for them. (Yeh, right)
- Making it seem like the company is more interested in making money than my needs.
- When a business does not honor a guarantee
- When the consumer feels that the salesperson doesn’t know their product well enough to explain it adequately.
- Bad language or dirty jokes.
- Dirty restrooms
- Pushy salespeople
- Websites with no phone number
- (And this really ticks me off) When you’re the only person standing in line in, and the person behind the counter looks out and says, “May I help someone?
A person will do business with someone they like and trust 99% of the time.
Is your business gaining trust with customers or are you inadvertently causing an absence of trust?
Custom Stock Photography
Create Your Own - Cheaply!
by Tim Miles
It's amazing how often you need some sort of stock photography featuring a human being. Why not create your own?
My client just finished up a simple, 2-hour shoot featuring our employees wearing their logo'd gear against white backgrounds and often holding various "placeholder" signs on which we can later write copy in post production. They're the same kind of photos you see on the various stock sites, but they're our employees wearing our logo.
A two-hour shoot with a local photographer yielded several hundred photographs for less than $400, and we have unlimited rights to use them.
And use them we will - on the web, in direct mail pieces, in brochures, in emails. Who knows? Maybe even lifesize cutouts for Christmas presents or to ward off evil sprits?
The possibilities are endless.
Check out more of Tim's great ideas at his website Clarity Up Front
Perhaps now would be a good time to have a complimentary meeting with a Wizard of Ads Partner. Links to their websites and blogs are listed down the right side of The Wizard Times. Hundreds of their articles with free insightful advice can been seen at www.americansmallbusiness.com 2009 would be a great year to attend a class at the Wizard Academy 21st Century Business School in Austin Texas. What is the Wizard Academy?
See you next week.
Clay Campbell
Wizard of Ads
PS. Need help to attract more customers and grow your business?
